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Movie Review - Night at the Museum (2006)
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(What this rating means)
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| Director: |
Shawn Levy |
| Starring: |
Ben Stiller, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Owen Wilson, and Robin Williams |
| Rated: |
PG (for mild action, language and brief rude humor) |
| Length: |
84 minutes |
| Genre: |
Comedy/Fantasy/Family |
| Tagline: |
Everything comes to life. |
| Studio: |
20th Century Fox |
| Website: |
Night at the Museum |
| Release: |
December 22, 2006 |
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PLOT
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In an effort to impress his son, Larry Daley (Stiller) decides to get a steady job. His ex-wife is marrying Paul
Rudd (who enjoys all of about 2 minutes of screentime), and Stiller's son wants to be a bond trader like ol' Ruddy.
Apparently he's not too impressed with all of dad's failed invention schemes. So Stiller gets hired as the night
security guard at the Museum of Natural History, but little does he know that the museum is cursed and all the
displays come alive at night (gasp). Slapstick havoc ensues.
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JOHNNY'S TAKE
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What we've got here is a movie whose humor pins its hopes and dreams on peeing monkeys and guys who think Teddy
Roosevelt was the country's 4th President. If you're easily amused and that's your style, then take the kids and
have a blast.
I won't deny that it accomplishes its goal as a cute, light-hearted, silly family comedy. The kids and a lot of
the parents in the audience seemed to love it. I, on the other hand, found myself bored about half the time. Ol'
Johnny even paid a visit to Sleepy-Pie Land near the beginning of the film.
Let me simplify this for you - have you seen the part in the trailer where Stiller has foam on his mouth
and he and the monkey engage in a sped-up slapping contest? Welp, you can expect 84 minutes of stuff like THAT.
Most of the audience howled with laughter. I did not. What are you most likely to do? I'll let you trust your
instinct on that one.
I did laugh out loud two or three times, but for the most part I was just politely smiling. Despite all
the "I LOVED it!" comments I heard afterwards, I simply cannot concur. Sorry, but it just didn't do much
for me. I guess my main disappointment lies in the fact that there's a lot of potential for a story
where museum wax figures come to life. It's just hard to realize that potential when you're too focused
on what your next pratfall will be.
I can recommend this to those of you who really love silly family comedies, but for those of you who are in the
mood for something more than watered-down Ben Stiller slapstick, I would suggest you not spend a night at the
theater with Night at the Museum.
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ODDS & ENDS
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- Call me a curmudgeon who doesn't want to suspend disbelief, but everybody's reactions to the museum's
artifacts coming to life are just so unrealistic. Stiller accepted this phenomenon within about 5 seconds.
- Why wouldn't Stiller take a video camera with him to work and record everything going on? He could totally
get rich after selling video footage of dinosaur bones coming to life! Yeah, yeah, we're not supposed to think
about that kind of stuff in a movie like this. But guess what - I DO!!!
- There's a scene where Mickey Rooney (not to be confused with the senile Andy Rooney) jumps onto Stiller and hits
him with an elbow and yells "Piledriver!" Um, that's not a piledriver. I smell weak script writing!
- There's a "Dexter Pees" game on the movie's website where you can control the monkey peeing in snow. Need I
say more?
- Carla Gugino is one fine woman.
- I saw Ben Stiller on Conan the other night and his hair was surprisingly gray. I thought it was Jerry Stiller
at first.
- To help Stiller dive head-first into Larry’s implausible reality, especially in scenes where he would be
interacting with wholly digital creations, director Shawn Levy did what he could to contribute - often by pretending
he himself was some of the museum’s inanimate creatures come to life! "There’s literally embarrassing, humiliating
footage of me with fake Tyrannosaurus talons saying 'Ra-ahh' and chasing Ben down a hallway to get a realistic
reaction," Levy admits. "Then they’d erase me in the computer and put in the dinosaur. And that’s how we spent our
days on this film."
- Owen Wilson plays a miniature cowboy character named Jedediah. This is obviously a tribute to Josh Brolin's
Jedediah Smith character in Into the West.
- The fact that Stiller plays a night guard is an obvious tribute to Brolin's Nightwatch.
- Ben Stiller was in Flirting with Disaster with Josh Brolin who was in Hollow Man with Kevin
Bacon.
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MAMA'S APPROVAL
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There are only a couple of naughty words, with the "a word" being the worst. You know what I mean - rhymes with
"sass," and Rosie O'Donnell has an amorphous one. Overall the film's fairly harmless.
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TRAILER COMPARISON
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The trailer is silly and looks childish. The movie's the same.
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THE GIST
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You can chalk Night at the Museum up as another movie I'm glad I didn't pay to see. You can definitely save
it for a rental, but I know plenty of kids are gonna want to see it immediately so I'd at least recommend trying to
make it a matinee.
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